Lady Midnight
Page 157

My father’s blood.
The demons were gathered in a circle, tearing at something on the floor. The body of Kit’s father. The sound of ripping flesh filled the room. Sickened, Kit felt his stomach lurch—just as the demon who had tumbled down the stairs came screeching back up them.
Its eyes, milky bulbs in its spongy head, seemed fixed on Kit. It advanced on him, and he seized up the chair beside him and held it out like a shield. In the back of his mind he was conscious that it probably shouldn’t be possible for an untrained fifteen-year-old boy to swing around a heavy piece of oak furniture like it was a toy.
But Kit didn’t care; he was half-insane with panic and horror. As the demon reared up in front of him, he swung the chair at it, knocking it backward. It surged up and lunged again. Kit feinted but this time a razored foreleg came down, slicing the chair in half. The demon sprang toward him with its teeth bared, and Kit held up the remains of the chair, which shattered in his hands. He was flung backward against the wall.
His head hit, hard, and dizziness flooded through him. He saw, through a haze, the praying mantis monster rearing up over him. Make it quick, he thought. For God’s sake let me die fast.
It descended toward him, mouth open, showing row upon row of teeth and a black gullet that seemed to fill his vision. He raised a hand to ward it off—it was closer, closer—and then it seemed to burst apart. Its head went one way, its body another. Green-black demon blood spattered onto him.
He stared upward and through the haze he saw two people standing over him. One was the blond Shadowhunter girl from the Institute, Emma Carstairs. She was brandishing a golden sword, stained with ichor. Beside her was another woman who looked a few years older. She was tall and slender, with long, curling brown hair. Vaguely, he knew he had seen her before—in the Shadow Market? He wasn’t sure.
“You deal with Kit,” said Emma. “I’ll take care of the other Mantids.”
Emma disappeared from the narrow field of Kit’s vision. He could see only the other woman. She had a sweet and gentle face, and she looked at him with surprising affection. “I’m Tessa Gray,” she said. “Get up, Christopher.”
Kit blinked. No one ever called him Christopher. No one but his father, when his father was angry. The thought of Johnny stabbed through him, and he stared over at the place where his father’s body lay crumpled.
To his surprise, there were two people there. A tall man with dark hair, wielding a sword-headed cane, had joined Emma, and the two of them were laying about themselves, slicing the demons to ribbons. Green ichor sprayed into the air like a geyser.
“My father,” Kit said, licking his dry lips and tasting blood. “He . . .”
“You must grieve later. Right now you are in great danger. More of those things may come, and worse things as well.”
He looked at her through the haze. His mouth tasted bitter. “Are you a Shadowhunter?”
“I am not,” Tessa Gray said with a surprising firmness. “But you are.” She reached her hand down toward him. “Come now,” she said. “On your feet, Christopher Herondale. We’ve been looking for you a long time.”
“Say something,” Emma said. “Please.”
But the boy in the passenger seat next to her didn’t speak. He was looking out the window toward the ocean; they had made it all the way to the coast highway without Kit saying a word.
“It’s all right,” Tessa said from the backseat of the car. Her voice was gentle, but then, her voice was always gentle. “You don’t need to speak, Christopher.”
“No one calls me that,” said Kit.
Emma jumped a little. Kit spoke in a monotone, staring out the window. She knew he was a little younger than she was, but more from his demeanor than anything else. He was quite tall, and his moves back at his house, fighting the Mantid demons, had been impressive.
He wore bloody jeans and a blood-soaked T-shirt that had probably once been blue. The ends of his pale blond hair were sticky with ichor and blood.
Emma had known there was trouble the moment she’d arrived at Johnny Rook’s. Though the house looked the same, though the door was closed and the windows shuttered and quiet, she’d felt a lack of the magical energy that had been apparent when they’d been there before. She’d glanced back down at the text message on her phone and drawn Cortana.
The inside of the house looked as if a bomb had gone off. It was clear the Mantids had come from the ground under the house—demons often traveled beneath the earth to avoid daylight. They had burst up through the floorboards; ichor and blood and sawdust were everywhere.
And Mantids. They looked far more grotesque in Johnny Rook’s living room than they had on the cliff tops of the Santa Monica Mountains. More insectile, more monstrous. Their razored arms sheered through wood walls, slashed apart furniture and books.
Emma swung Cortana. She sliced one Mantid apart; it disappeared with a screech, leaving her view of the room unobstructed. Several of the other Mantids were splashed with red, human blood. They circled the remains of what had been Johnny Rook, in pieces on the floor.
Kit. Emma looked around wildly, saw the boy crouching by the stairs. He was unharmed. She started toward him—just as he seized up a chair and smashed it down over a Mantid demon’s head.
Only training kept Emma from stopping in her tracks. Human children didn’t do that. They didn’t know how to fend off demons. They didn’t have the instinct—
The door behind her blew open, and again only her training kept her from halting in surprise. She managed to sever the head of another Mantid demon, slicking Cortana’s blade with ichor, even as Jem Carstairs raced into the room, followed by Tessa.
They had plunged into the battle without a word to each other or to Emma, but Emma had exchanged a glance with Jem as they fought, and knew that he wasn’t surprised to see her. He looked older than he had in Idris—now closer to twenty-six, more a man than a boy, though Tessa looked just the same.
She had the same sweet expression Emma remembered, and the same kind voice. She had looked at Kit with love and sadness when she had gone over to him and held out her hand.
Christopher Herondale.
“But Kit is short for Christopher, is it not?” Tessa asked now, still gently. Kit said nothing. “Christopher Jonathan Herondale is your true name. And your father was Jonathan, too, right?”
Johnny. Jonathan.
There were a thousand Shadowhunters named Jonathan. Jonathan Shadowhunter had founded the whole race of Nephilim. It was Jace’s name as well.
Emma had heard Tessa back at the house, of course, but she still couldn’t quite believe it. Not just a Shadowhunter in hiding, but a Herondale. Clary and Jace would need to be told. They would likely come running. “He’s a Herondale? Like Jace?”
“Jace Herondale,” Kit muttered. “My father said he was one of the worst.”
“One of the worst what?” Jem asked.
“Shadowhunters.” Kit spat the word. “And I’m not one, by the way. I’d know.”
“Would you?” Jem’s voice was mild. “How?”
“None of your business,” Kit said. “I know what you’re doing. My dad told me you’d kidnap anyone under nineteen with the Sight. Anyone you thought you could make into a Shadowhunter. There’s barely any of you left after the Dark War.”